Quotes by and posts relating to one of the most influential authors of the 20th century, G.K. Chesterton

A blog dedicated to providing quotes by and posts relating to one of the most influential (and quotable!) authors of the twentieth century, G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936). If you do not know much about GKC, I suggest visiting the webpage of the American Chesterton Society as well as this wonderful Chesterton Facebook Page by a fellow Chestertonian

Friday, October 31, 2014

The other criticism which the present critic may criticise is the frequent observation that a soliloquy is old-fashioned- and by "old-fashioned" they always mean artificial or unnatural. Now I should say that a soliloquy is the most natural thing in the world. It is no more artificial than a conscience; or a habit of walking about a room. I constantly talk to myself. If a man does not talk to himself, it is because he is not worth talking to. Soliloquy is simply the strength and liberty of the soul, without which each one of us would be like that nobleman in one of the most brilliant and bizarre of Mr. Henry Jame's tales, who did not exist at all except when others were present. Every man ought to be able to argue with himself.

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

The old generation of rebels was purely negative in its rebellion, and cannot give the new generation of rebels anything positive against which it should not rebel. It is not that the old man cannot convince young people that he is right; it is that he cannot even convince them that he is convinced. And he is not convinced; for he never had any conviction except that he was young; and that is not a conviction that strengthens with years. What we see, in short, is not the first tearing triumph of revolutionary children. It is the first great failure of revolutionary parents. It is the collapse of scepticism in the seat of authority.

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Proverbs are regarded as sacred things. The mere word suffices for
the name of one of the books of the Bible, and yet it is remarkable
what a large number of current proverbs when properly understood
seem like texts from the horrible scriptures of a lower world.
Proverbs are commonly at the best truisms; and a truism
is a dead truth, a truth that we no longer feel as true.
Spring, the stars, marriage, and death are truths, and it should
be the aim of all literature and philosophy to prevent their
becoming truisms. But it is extraordinary to notice the large
number of proverbs, enshrining the wisdom of many generations,
which are really mean and materialistic axioms fighting at every
point against the realisation of a higher and more liberal life.
We are told, for example, that "a penny saved is a penny gained,"
but proverbial philosophy is silent upon the far deeper and more
practical piece of wisdom that a penny spent is a penny gained.
If the author of the proverb wished to express himself with true
philosophical lucidity he should have said that a penny saved
is a penny placed in such a position that at some remote period
it may effectively be gained. This form of words would make
the proverb slightly more inconvenient for the purposes of constant
repetition, but this I incline to think would be an advantage.
Instances might be produced ad infinitum. It is said that "little
things please little minds" but there is perhaps no better
test of a great mind than that it reverences little things.
It is said that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,
and a whole sermon might be preached against the vulgarity
and inhumanity of the sentiment. A flower growing untouched
in a meadow, a flower, therefore, that is really a flower,
is immeasurably more ours when we enjoy it as such than when we
amputate it, and put it in a pot. as if it were a diseased limb.
A part of the cosmic life which preserves its own divine indifference
to ourselves is worth any number of cosmic slaves that we have taught
to fawn upon us. A bird in the bush is worth two in the hand.
Everywhere we find this same quality in proverbs, that,
although they are certainly not immoral, although they may be said
to contain a certain brisk diurnal morality, yet they certainly
fight so far as they go against the higher and braver life.

Sunday, October 26, 2014

The great conception which lay at the back of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures was the conception that to man had been given a certain law, to champion which was his sole and simple business. ‘He hath shown thee, O man, that which is good’ is perhaps of all earthly sayings the one which has the deepest ring; it seems, as it were, too true and simple to be comprehended. The stars in their courses might fight against his honour, scientific discoveries might make the world seem more perilous and equivocal; at the turning of a stone or the splitting of a sea beast, the whole cosmic army might seem suddenly to desert to the devil. But man had in his heart a secret which would outlast these things; he had his orders; he was the sentinel of God.

Friday, October 24, 2014

It has been one of the less possible dreams of my life to be a painted Pagan God and live upon a ceiling [...] The company about me on the clouds varies greatly with the mood of the vision, but always it is in some way, if not always a very obvious way, beautiful. One frequent presence is G.K. Chesterton, a joyous whirl of brush work, appropriately garmented and crowned. When he is there, I remark, the whole ceiling is by a sort of radiation convivial. We drink limitless old October from handsome flagons, and we argue mightily about Pride (his weak point) and the nature of Deity. A hygienic, attentive, and essentially anesthetic Eagle checks, in the absence of exercise, any undue enlargement of our Promethean livers...

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

[George] Marlin is gathering the writings of Chesterton. "After the death of Dorothy Collins," he says, "I was the first person allowed to see his papers. They were in his attic in his house outside London. I found plays and poems nobody knew existed. There were condolence letters to his widow from Churchill and T.S. Eliot. I even sat in the chair that belonged to Dickens. It had been given to Chesterton by [Dicken's] daughter after his death.

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

We need a much clearer conception of the real value and function
of mysticism. It is not mysticism to explain a puzzle: to say that
a green cross means evolution and a blue triangle means orthodoxy.
This sort of allegorical art is a mere cryptogram which ceases
to exist when it is explained. Whatever a mystic may be,
he is surely not only a person who destroys mystery.

The real function of symbolism is much deeper and much more practical.
We are surrounded in this world by huge and anonymous forces:
as they rush by us we throw a name at them-love, death, destiny,
remembrance-but the things themselves are infinitely vaster
and more varied than the names. True artistic symbolism exists
in order to provide another alphabet for the direct interpretation
of these infinite anarchic things than the alphabet of language.
It is not that a sea at sunset "represents" sorrow, but that a sea
at sunset represents a great deal of the truth which is missed by
the word "sorrow." So it is with Mr. Downing's Shakespeare allegory.
It is not that Shakespeare is a mere philosopher: it is that philosophy
is one way of describing certain unutterable things, and Shakespeare
is another. Caliban, says Mr. Downing, "represents the mob."
The truth is that Caliban represents an old, dark, and lawless
element in things, an element which has no name except Caliban,
and of which the mob is one of the hundred incarnations.
So far from it being true that Caliban symbolises the mob
in the street, it would be far truer to say that the mob in
the street symbolises Caliban.

The earlier and more practical truth-the truth of religions-is
that a tree is a miracle, an inexplicable explosion of divine life,
and that no conceivable number of precisely similar trees go
any way towards explaining it or turning the miracle into a law.
If we saw a gentleman going to church every Sunday in a top hat
and yellow dressinggown, our curiosity would not be allayed
by his explaining that he had done the same thing regularly
for the last twenty years. Nor can we excuse the eccentric
conduct of the sun in rising in the east merely on the ground
of habit and advanced years. What Mr. Dadson does not realise
is that religion has nothing at all to do with the laws of nature,
because it deals only with the primary wonder of the existence
of anything which is entirely untouched by the monotonous
manner in which anything when created chooses to behave. ... Religion does not consist in looking upon
the world as an order, but in looking upon it as an act.
For the purposes of Mr. Dadson's natural philosophy, it is
quite right and proper to say that evolution made the world.
But it is precisely as if a schoolmaster who had just been hit
on the foot with a cricket ball were to ask who rolled the missile
and were to receive the answer that revolution rolled it.
The degree of gaiety which would be aroused in him by that reply
would be about equal to the amount that I experience from
the former explanation considered in the light, not of physical,
but of mental science. Mr. Dadson is content with a mechanical
explanation of the world, and he supposes that all myths and
religions were meant to explain how rational the universe was.
It does not occur to him that they may have been meant
to express how irrational it was, to reach past all the minor
phenomena that obey law to that supreme and splendid law
which is a lawless thing.

Sunday, October 19, 2014

Primarily, we must, in studying anything so widespread as printed matter,
get rid of one fundamental error in our use of the words good and bad.
We speak of a knife that is blunt as a bad knife or a paint-box that
yields hard and weak colour as a bad paint-box. For practical purposes
this is right enough. Compared with other objects of the same class
these things are bad. But for all that the word bad is a misnomer;
for bad things are things that hurt us, not things that please
us insufficiently. A blunt knife is not bad, unless it cuts us, and then,
for the matter of that, it is not so bad as a sharp knife would be.
A paint-box is not bad, unless we eat the paints, and even the most
exquisite greens and purples may be discordant if mingled internally.
A common knife is good because however hard it may be to carve a joint
with it, it would be much harder to carve it with an umbrella.
A common paint-box is good, because however hard it may be to extract
paint out of it, it would be much harder to extract it out of a lump
of red sandstone. These things, however rude, are inventions. The most
forbearing British father would complain if he were asked to carve
the joint with one of the primitive flint-knives of the British Museum.
But in their cases in the British Museum we respect them as if they
were the relics of a saint.

Friday, October 17, 2014

Education seems to be getting into a tangle; which is largely a tangle of red tape. It is a confusion between the attempt to keep the strings of it very tight and to throw the threads of it very far. Education is treated as a settlement; and yet, at the same time, education is treated as an experiment. It is imposed on everybody as a platitude; and yet it is free to take the most fantastic forms of paradox. First a politician tells us that all children must go to school; and then a professor tells us that all schools must be conducted in the tops of trees. At least, that is the sort of thing the professor tells us. And the situation becomes alarming when the professor is supported by the politician and even by the policeman. Of course, there is no objection to the professor teaching his own family at the top of a tree; or even to his hopping back to them with a worm in his mouth. But when this is connected up with a compulsory system for the whole State it is very different. It is very different if they put a professor to twitter in every tree, or a worm to wriggle in every child. It is then more than an experiment; it may be called an experience. It seems likely that even if the worm does not turn, the child will. A thing will be imposed on everybody before it has been explained to anybody. The professor will be altogether too early a bird, and will catch the worm and give it to us before we are half awake.

Thursday, October 16, 2014

The aristocrat is very seldom a man who objects to novelties. The aristocrat is generally a man who longs for novelties, and runs after novelties, and dies of inanition, so to speak, if he cannot get enough novelties. We should not expect to find a Cubist picture in a cottage, or some new kind of Vorticist dancing on a village green. A novelty is a luxury, and is found with all the other examples of the latest luxuries. Hence a profession of faith in progress is almost universal in plutocracy.

Sunday, October 12, 2014

But ours is specially the time when a man can advertise his wares not as a universality, but as what the tradesmen call "a specialty." We all know this, for instance, about modern art. Michelangelo and Whistler were both fine artists; but one is obviously public, the other obviously private, or rather, not obvious at all. Michelangelo's frescoes are doubtless finer than the popular judgment, but they are plainly meant to strike the popular judgment. Whistler's pictures seem often meant to escape the popular judgment; they even seem meant to escape the popular admiration. They are elusive, fugitive; they fly even from praise. Doubtless many artists in Michelangelo's day declared themselves to be great artists, although they were unsuccessful. But they did not declare themselves great artists because they were unsuccessful: that is the peculiarity of our own time, which has a positive bias against the populace.

Thursday, October 9, 2014

I found the following passage in the book "Be Not Afraid!": Pope John Paul II Speaks Out on his Life, his Beliefs and his Inspiring Vision for Humanity, Andre Frossard and Pope John Paul II, (1982- emphasis mine).

I include it on this blog for it's reference to Chesterton, but since it is a wonderful reflection by Pope St. John Paul II in its own right, I have quoted it at greater length than I normally would have.

(Incidentally, for an instance of John Paul 2 quoting GKC in a general audience, go here

Since the notorious 'Families, I hate you' uttered by a man who cultivated his faults with as much care as a gardener cultivates his roses, one or two generations of moralists have made demoralizing assertions which fail to stand up to Chesterton's robust and serene assertion: 'The family is a cell of resistance to oppression.' This aspect of the family does not seem to be very clearly perceived by the theorists. I asked the Holy Father what he thought about this.

"Chesterton's words are beautiful. Beautiful and true. Moreover, they are shrewd- and demanding. For the family to be, as he asserts, 'a cell of resistance to oppression', it must be a community of great maturity and depth. When I say, 'it must,' I mean that a moral obligation subsists. To speak of the family as a 'cell of resistance to oppression' is to indicate it's moral value and at the same time to define its proper structure- and in the last analysis to rely upon the spiritual maturity of the persons involved. When this is missing, the man or the woman is liable to see in their indissoluble union only a a constraint to be broken.

The family- much more than any other social community- has an essentially personal structure. Each of its members has his own importance, not owing to any given function, or to the resources he procures or anything else, but simply because he exists, because he is a 'person', because he is 'this particular person'. That is why the family, more than any other form of human contract, deserves the magnificent description of a 'communion of persons', which indicates the depth and intensity of the mutual relations, as well as the depth and strength of the resulting interpersonal ties. If in a family (supposing that it is morally mature) each member, and therefore each individual, has his own importance, this cannot create a climate of individualism- nothing is less characteristic of a family that develops healthily. The fact that man has an existence 'for himself' obliges him to live also 'for others', as we read in the beautiful words of Gaudium et Spes: 'Man can fully discover his true self only in a sincere giving of himself.' Thus the 'communion of persons' is much more than a bond between people; it signifies existence, life, action based on the principle of reciprocal giving- the reciprocal gift of humanity.

In a family, every being is important because of what he is, because he exists. The gift of humanity from each to each is, so to speak, the starting point in the family, and also its duty. The more each member of a family knows how to live for others, the clearer it is that for this family that member is important because he exists and because of what he is. Even when it cannot be said that 'he knows how to live for others', the fact remains that he belongs to the family and that he counts because he exists, he counts for what he is, even though in that case he is causing suffering- which itself demonstrates this truth. It is less obvious in communities which take a more 'neutral' stance, which are less sensitive to the human person. Some years ago I wrote a little treatise on the family as a 'communion of persons', largely inspired by the passage in Gaudium et Spes which I have just quoted."

Thursday, October 2, 2014

I just came across a book of writings by Pope John Paul I. It is called A Passionate Adventure; Living the Catholic Faith Today. I should note I only have access to the Google books preview feature.) In any case, I came across a few places in which he refers to Chesterton (from homilies given before he became Pope), so I have included them below.

First, from this homily:

"Not Convention, but Conviction"
Homily to the Riveneto Convention of Communion and Liberation
May 31, 1976

There was a little island- Chesterton wrote- and the children used to go there to play ball. They played serenely and securely, because the playing field was completely surrounded by a high wall. One day some important people approached the little island and said: "knock down that wall: don't you see that it limits you and takes away your space? Away with it, more air, more liberty." They were listened to, the wall was thrown down. But now, if you go to the island, you find the children unhappy; there is no longer the same security as before; every so often a ball falls into the sea, and they waste time fishing it out; sometimes the waves carry it away. "Away with the Pope," some people say, "he limits you! More air, more liberty!" Sometimes they are listened to, but the consequences are under our eyes: without the Pope we lack a sure reference point, they slip in others to act like the Pope, and great insecurity, doubt, and confusion are the result.

The story he references, with some variations, can be found in the last chapter of GKC's book Orthodoxy, called "Authority and the Adventurer", which you can read online here:

Luther has said: human nature is corrupt, it can produce only sin. Goodness consists of the fact that God covers these sins with a mantle of mercy. The Marxists say: man, taken individually, is egotistical and wicked. He will become good and happy if he is placed in a collective regime that achieves economic prosperity for everyone. It has been noted, however, that in a period of great prosperity, juvenile delinquency increases, while religious life prospers when the vow and the spirit of poverty are practiced in earnest.

The truth lies in between the two hypotheses: we all experience in ourselves moments of goodness and moments of wickedness; we are like a watch that has all of its wheels, but needs a mainspring that will make it move. The mainspring is the grace of God: if we do not resist it, our spiritual wheels will work and produce good. Naturally, these are mysterious things; we hold them through faith, we do not know exactly how they work, they do not lend themselves to verification. Should we be surprised? "There is nothing," Pascal wrote, "about which we know everything." And Chesterton: "How could physical science prove that man is not depraved? You do not cut a man open to find his sins. You do not boil him until he gives forth the unmistakable green fumes of depravity. How could physical science find any traces of a moral fall?...Did [the scientist] expect to find a fossil Eve with an fossil apple inside her? Did he suppose that the ages would have spared for him a complete skeleton of Adam...attached to a slightly faded fig leaf?" [2]

"Light in Our Darkness"
Homily for the Feast of St. Lucy
December 13, 1977

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, after the doubts and uncertainties of his youth, became first a fervent Anglican, then, by meditating and conversing with faithful Anglicans and studying, crossed over to the Catholic Church. He declared: "A church that wants to have authority must possess absolutely clear ideas when it comes to the great moral questions...it must say a yes or a no: but the Protestant churches are completely lost in the face of such moral questions...clarity and resolve before the powerful questions of modern life- I find them only in the Catholic Church; therefore I became Catholic." [5]

[Footnote]

[5] G.K. Chesterton to the Washington News Service, [1923. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the original English text.- Trans].

Also, speaking of John Paul I, as I've mentioned on this blog before, he once wrote a "letter" to Chesterton (as a literary form, of course, as GKC had been dead for decades when the "letter" was written). You can read it here:

About Me

My name is Mike. I am a Catholic living in Mt. Sterling, Kentucky (though I am originally from Belleville, Illinois, a suburb of St. Louis on the Illinois side of the Mississippi). I am a convert to Catholicism from a fundamentalist Baptist background, and Jesus Christ is the most important person in my life.